2023-08-18 11:02:33
The history of consciousness, according to Charles Pépin
“This morning I would like to tell you the story of consciousness, or rather, the story of a man. A scientist, a neuroscientist whose passion, the object of all research, and has been for years, decades even, is consciousness. What is Consciousness? What are we aware of when we are aware? Is our consciousness the product of our brain activity? For him, and has been for years, the answer is clearly: yes.
The brain is made up of approximately 85 billion neurons, many more synapses which ensure the connections between these neurons, a crazy electrical activity, an ability to regenerate without end, which is called cerebral plasticity. The brain and its powers dazzle him so much that he logically comes to see consciousness as a sort of consequence, outgrowth, emergent effect of brain activity.
Until something disturbs him. It’s a morning, very early, day breaks, the valley before his eyes stretches as far as the eye can see. He meditates as he has for years. How to qualify this impression?
He had of course read certain Buddhist writings evoking what he is going through, but there, he feels it in his whole body, like a presence, like evidence. He has the impression of rediscovering a primary state of consciousness, and of rediscovering it all the more precisely because he uses his brain less.
And this presence carries an idea: what if consciousness were first?
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It would then not be the expression of cerebral activity but its condition of possibility, consciousness would be expressed through this cerebral activity without being produced by the brain. And that would also explain that consciousness can continue to exist even when the brain no longer functions.
He then begins to learn about near-death experiences, subjective lived experiences, contact with a deceased, what end-of-life patients say, how they feel the consciousness of a deceased awaiting them, ready to welcome them…? The figures are surprising, the studies on this subject very square, serious, scientific, it is not a question of a few isolated cases…
What do all of these experiences have in common? They suggest a consciousness independent of cerebral activity, that’s what he thinks about, and even that he no longer thinks about when he resumes his meditation, plunging himself again into the contemplation of the valley…
To talk about it this morning, about consciousness and all these experiences at the heart of which our consciousness seems to be able to emancipate itself from our cerebral activity, I have the joy of receiving Christophe Fauré, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, author recently at Albin Michel of a sum devoted to this subject, This life… and beyond, investigation of the continuity of consciousness after death.
Christophe Fauré therefore, who joined us this morning, well aware and alive, in the fascinating cavern of France Inter, under the Plato sun, to help us open up to this surprising question: What if our consciousness did not need the matter of our brain to exist? What is our consciousness?
Christophe Fauré in Plato’s cave © Radio France – Estelle Gapp
The book
This life… and beyond. Inquiry into the continuity of consciousness after death was published on November 2, 2022 by Albin Michel. This book is an investigation into the continuity of consciousness after death by focusing on three recurring experiences: “near-death experiences” (EMI), “end-of-life experiences” (EFV), “subjective experiences of contact with a deceased” (VSCD).
Excerpts from the show
“Quantum physics teaches us that the phenomenon also depends on its observation. So, we understand that consciousness is primary and matter comes from consciousness. These findings of EMI, EFV or VSCD go in this direction.”
“People who have had a near-death experience (NDE) often come back changed and retain two major notions: the importance, the dimension of love and the dimension of wisdom, regardless of their culture. The union of wisdom and compassion would be the ultimate goal. And that is the major postulate of Buddhism.”
“The fundamental interest of these end-of-life experiences is the understanding of what remains to be accomplished or lived on earth”
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“There is no scientific study that proves that matter produces consciousness, nothing can allow us to say that there is a causality between neuronal activity and consciousness. However, this becomes the basis of the objections to these experiences.”
“The history of science is made of paradigm shifts. We are tending towards a paradigm shift.”
“To get out of fascination, there are lessons to accompany people who are going through these experiences. People can refer to these studies and find an echo in them of their experience. It’s about comfort, reinsurance.”
“What barbarism not to believe in souls – in the immortality of souls! what an idiotic truth materialism is”. Roland Barthes, July 13, 1978, Mourning diary.
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Bitter Sweet Symphony* de The Verve
The Road* of Arthur H
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